“Hatton!” he heard the mistress’ voice call in agitation the next morning, and he slowly re-entered the dining room. “What is this? Why have you brought me this?” Mrs. Prothero quivered through all her shapeless, cushiony form. “Excuse the liberty, madam, but I ventured to think that one of the gentlemen referred to was Miss Katherine’s husband.” He bent forward and indicated to his mistress with his pink, manicured forefinger the name of Harald Petersen (spelled “Harold Petersen”). “Miss Katherine?” demanded Mrs. Prothero. “Who is she? How do we know her, Hatton?” She turned her head away from the group photograph on page five he was attempting to show her. “The young lady who came to stay, madam, over the Christmas holidays and on one or two other occasions when Miss Mary was in school at Vassar.” He paused, waiting for Mrs. Prothero’s otiose memory to begin to work. But Mrs. Prothero shook her head, a mass of pale-brown, lusterless, trembling ringlets that, despite all Yvonne’s and the hairdresser’s labors, resembled a costumer’s wig. “Who were her people?” “We never knew, madam,” Hatton replied solemnly. “‘Strong,’ she was called. From one of the western states.” “Not Eastlake?” queried Mrs. Prothero, with a momentary, uncertain brightening. “Oh no, madam. We know Miss Elinor. But this other young lady was dark too, and pretty, in a natural sort of way. Forbes, if you remember, took a fancy to her. ‘A Highland rose,’ she used to say.” He imitated Forbes’s burr. Mrs. Prothero gave a faint cry. “Oh, dear, yes,” she said. “I remember. Very pretty, Hatton. But rather uncouth. Or was that the person she married? What was it she always called him?” “‘My fiancé’?” supplied Hatton, with a smile in abeyance. “That’s it exactly!” cried Mrs. Prothero. “Still, we oughtn’t to laugh at her. Mr. Prothero used to recite a poem when she stayed here. ‘Maud Muller, on a summer’s day …’ And then something about the hay. Oh dear, how did it go? Help me, Hatton.” But Hatton for once was caught napping. “I’ve got it!” Mrs. Prothero exclaimed. “‘Stood listening while a pleased surprise/Gleamed in her long-lashed hazel eyes.’ Tennyson, I suppose.” “I daresay, madam,” replied Hatton austerely. “But we never knew who she was,” Mrs. Prothero reminisced, sighing. “Mr. Prothero often used to ask me, ‘Who’s that girl who’s always staying here? The Maud Muller girl.’ And I was never able to tell him. Her people were early settlers out West, I believe she said.” She put on her glasses and peered again at the folded rectangle of newspaper. “And now, Hatton, you tell me she’s in jail. What has she done? Shoplifting, I expect.” “I believe,” Hatton intervened, “that it’s her husband who was in custody. Something to do with a labor dispute.” Mrs. Prothero waved a pale plump hand. “Don’t tell me any more, Hatton. And I beg you not to bring it to Mr. Prothero’s attention. We had the man to dinner. I remember it distinctly.” She reflected, her pale, dim eyes turning anxiously behind her gold-rimmed spectacles. “The best thing, I think, Hatton, would be for you to take that article out to the kitchen and burn it in the stove. Without saying anything to Cook, if you please. People in our position can’t afford, Hatton—” She looked up at the butler expectantly, for him to finish her thought. “Quite, madam,” he agreed, picking up the folded paper and replacing it on the salver. “‘People who live in glass houses,’ Hatton …How does it go? Oh, dear, no, I mean another one. ‘Should be above reproach.’ Shakespeare, isn’t it? Julius Caesar.” She smiled. “We are being quite highbrow this morning,” she went on. “Quite the intellectuals. We must blame Vassar for that, mustn’t we, Hatton? Though you’ve always been quite a thinker.” Hatton bowed in acknowledgment and retired a few steps. “Now mind you burn it, Hatton. With your own hands,” his mistress cautioned.
When the butler had left the room, Mrs. Prothero gave way; she leaned on a podgy milk-blue elbow and let the tears rise to her eyes. Hatton watched her through the porthole in the pantry door. He knew what the Madam was thinking. She was thinking how brave she had been in the butler’s presence, not letting him see how upset she was by that nasty story in the newspaper. Disgraceful. And of how she blamed everyone, starting with the Chapin School, for contriving to send Miss Mary to that college that was always getting in the paper—not that the others were any better, but you heard less about them. Everyone she trusted, starting with the Chapin School, had turned against her on the college issue: the schoolmistress, what was her name, who had helped Miss Mary fill out her own application forms; Forbes, who had lent her the price of the registration fee out of her savings; the Hartshorn girl, who had smuggled her out of the house three days running, it seemed, to take the college entrance exams; and Hatton, Hatton himself, who had got round her and her husband, when Miss Mary was accepted, by announcing that he did not believe a year or two of college would do the young lady any harm. It was like a case in Bar Harbor she had heard about only the other day at the Colony Club. She had told Hatton about it, just to show him that she had not forgotten. An elopement, that was, out a French window of one of the big houses and through a parting in the hedge. The staff, as usual, there too (Yes, she had said “as usual” straight out to Hatton) had gone against the family’s wishes; the butler had actually crept out at night with a pair of garden shears and cut a hole through the hedge. What if the couple were married immediately, by a minister who was waiting in the rectory, so they said? He was only another accomplice. As for her own staff, she had always suspected that someone—Forbes or, more likely, Hatton—had signed her name to the Vassar application forms; Miss Mary swore she had done it herself and was brash as paint about it, but Mrs. Prothero still felt that Hatton had guided her hand.
Hatton turned away from the porthole; the Madam’s sobs were becoming audible, and he went to ring for Yvonne. When she reached that point, the Madam was quite unreasonable. She was very much mistaken in thinking, as she still did, that he had forged her signature. They had kept their secret from him too; he had known nothing about the whole affair until it was over, and Miss Mary had been accepted. At the present time, he rather shared the Madam’s views on higher education, though the Madam was not consistent: why give Miss Mary a plane if you did not want her to fly up every week now to learn to be a horse doctor? But Miss Mary always had her way, except with him.
He compressed his lips and went to take another peek at Mrs. Prothero. He was sorry now he had showed her the newspaper story, for what she did not know would not hurt her, poor lady. It had been an excess of zeal that had prompted it, he recognized—a certain over-perfectionism, if that was the term, in the performance of his role. “Hatton,” he said to himself, “pride goeth before a fall.” In the dining room, Mrs. Prothero would be reflecting that, thanks to higher education, she had had a jailbird in the house.
“A jailbird!” she repeated indignantly, with a wobble of her receding chin, so loud that Yvonne, coming down the stairs, could hear her. Clutching her wrapper around her and holding Yvonne’s arm, she retired upstairs to her bedroom and canceled the car, which was to take her to the hairdresser at eleven. Meanwhile Hatton, who had already told the chauffeur that he would not be needed, was cutting out the newspaper clipping and preparing to paste it in his scrapbook.
In Boston, the next morning, Mrs. Renfrew met Dottie for lunch at the Ritz. They were lunching early in order to go to Bird’s for the wedding invitations and announcements; later in the afternoon, they had an appointment at Crawford Hollidge for a fitting. Dottie’s wedding dress and going-away costume were being made in New York, but on most items, country suits and simple sport things above all, you could do just as well in Boston and at half the price. After Crawford Hollidge, if there was time, they were going to stop at Stearns’ to look at linen and compare prices with Filene’s. The Renfrews were not rich, only quite comfortably off, and Mrs. Renfrew economized wherever she could; she felt it was poor taste, in these times, to splurge when others were doing without. They had had the dressmaker in to see if Mrs. Renfrew’s wedding gown, which she had got from her mother, could possibly be made over for Dottie, who was dying to wear it, but there was no
t enough material in the seams; Dottie, they discovered (and there was progress for you!), was nearly four inches wider in the waist, bust, and hips, though not at all “hippy” or “busty”; it was a question of larger bones. Mrs. Renfrew’s mind this morning was full of measurements—sheet and glove and dress sizes; she was thinking too of the bridesmaids’ presents. Silver compacts from Shreve Crump? Tiny sterling cigarette lighters? There would only be the three: Polly Andrews, of course, and Helena Davison, and Dottie’s cousin, Vassar ’31, from Dedham, who was going to be matron of honor. Since the groom was a widower, both Dottie and Mrs. Renfrew felt it was better for the wedding to be quiet, just the matron of honor and the two attendants behind her. Dottie had been pining to have Lakey, but Lakey had written, from lovely Avila, that she could not come back this year. In her letter she said that she was sending a little Spanish primitive of a Madonna (perfect for the Southwest) and that Dottie should have no trouble clearing it through the Customs House, as an antique. Mrs. Renfrew hoped that Sam, Dottie’s father, whose firm had been clearing Customs since the days of sailing ships, would see to that for them; there was such a great deal to do.
On her way here to meet Dottie, who had gone to Dr. Perry for a check-up, Mrs. Renfrew had stopped at the Chilton Club to have a manicure and leafed through the day’s New York papers in the library, in case she saw anything in the ads for Dottie that could be ordered by mail. Her eye was caught by a photo of some young people in evening dress on one of the inner pages, next to a Peck & Peck ad. She turned back to start the story, reprinted from yesterday’s late edition, on the front page. When she saw Harald’s name, she immediately made a note to tell Dottie at lunch; Dottie might want to call Kay to get all the gory details. Mrs. Renfrew was a cheerful, lively person who always looked on the gay side of things; she imagined it must have been quite an adventure for those radical young people to get dressed up and do battle with the hotel staff, rather like a Lampoon prank; Kay’s husband, she was sure, when he came up for trial, would be let off after a lecture from the judge, the way the Harvard boys always were when they got in trouble with the Cambridge police force. Apropos of that, she meant to ask Sam to stop at City Hall and pay a parking ticket she and Dottie had got the other day.
It was only because she had so many other things on her mind, such as type faces, sheet sizes (would Brook and Dottie sleep in a double bed? It was so hard to know, with a widower, what to expect), and the bridesmaids’ dresses (such a problem, unless Helena could come on from Cleveland early to be fitted), that she quite forgot to mention Harald’s fracas till they had finished luncheon and were walking down Newbury Street, side by side, like two sisters, Mrs. Renfrew in her beaver and Dottie in her mink. “Dottie!” she exclaimed. “I nearly forgot! You’ll never guess what I was reading this morning at the Club. One of your friends has run afoul of the law.” She looked quizzically up at her daughter, her blue eyes dancing. “Try to guess.” “Pokey,” said Dottie. Mrs. Renfrew shook her head. “Not even warm.” “Harald Petersen!” repeated Dottie, when her mother had told her. “That wasn’t fair, Mother. He’s not exactly a friend. What did he do?” Mrs. Renfrew related the story. In the middle of it, Dottie stopped dead, between Arlington and Berkeley. “Who was the other man?” she asked. “I wonder who it could have been.” “I don’t know, Dottie. But his picture was in the paper. He had quite a ‘shiner.’” “You don’t remember the name, Mother?” Mrs. Renfrew ruefully shook her head. “Why? Do you think it’s someone you know?” Dottie nodded. “It was a fairly common name,” said Mrs. Renfrew, pondering. “It seems to me it began with B.” “Not Brown?” cried Dottie. “It might have been,” replied her mother. “Brown, Brown,” she repeated. “I wonder if that was it.” “Oh, Mother!” said Dottie. “Why didn’t you clip it out?” “Darling,” said her mother. “You can’t clip newspapers in the Club. It’s against the house rules. And yet you’d be surprised, the number of members that do it. Magazines too.” “What did he look like?” said Dottie. “Rather artistic,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “Dissipated-looking. But that may have been the black eye. A gentleman, I should think. Now, what did it say he did? Sad to say, Dottie, my memory’s going. ‘Harald Petersen, playwright,’ and the other one was something like that. Not ‘ditchdigger,’ anyway,” she added brightly. “‘Painter’?” suggested Dottie. “I don’t think so,” said her mother.
All this time, they had been standing in the middle of the sidewalk, with people brushing past them. It was cold; Mrs. Renfrew pushed back her coat sleeve and glanced at her watch. “You go on, Mother,” said Dottie abruptly. “I’ll meet you. I’m going back to the Ritz to buy the paper.” Mrs. Renfrew looked seriously up at Dottie; she was not alarmed, having guessed for a long time that some little love trouble had happened to Dottie early last summer in New York. That was why she had sent her out West, to get over it. “Do you want me to come with you?” she said. Dottie hesitated. Mrs. Renfrew took her arm. “Come along, dear,” she said. “I’ll wait in the ladies’ lounge while you get it from the porter.”
A few minutes later, Dottie appeared with the Herald Tribune; the Times had been sold out. “Putnam Blake,” she said. “You were right about the B. I met him at Kay’s party. He raises funds for labor. We got an appeal from him the other day for something. And he married Norine Schmittlapp, who was in our class. You can see her in the big picture. The four of them have got very inty this winter.” From Dottie’s flat tone, Mrs. Renfrew could tell that this was not “the one.” The poor girl laid the paper aside quietly; then she sank her chin into the palm of her hand and sat thinking. Mrs. Renfrew took out her compact, so as not to seem to watch Dottie. As she powdered her pretty, bright features, she considered what to do. Dottie still “had it bad,” as the girls said nowadays; that was all too clear. Her mother’s sympathies, like delicate feelers, fluttered out to her; she knew how it felt to yearn for the sight of a certain name long after the man who owned it had passed out of one’s life forever. The very prospect of seeing his name and his photograph had got Dottie all “hot and bothered” again. Yet Mrs. Renfrew could not decide whether it would be wiser to let Dottie bear her disappointment in silence or to help her talk it out. The danger of this was that Dottie’s flame might only be fanned by talking; if she had the strength to stamp it out alone, she would come through, in the end, a finer person. And yet it made little Mrs. Renfrew wince and bite her lips to sit pretending to fix her hair when a few words from her might be balm to Dottie’s soul.
Mrs. Renfrew had complete confidence in Dottie’s judgment: if Dottie considered this man in New York, whoever he was, unsuitable for her, Dottie must be right. Some girls in Dottie’s position might give up a fine young man because he was poor or had a dependent mother and sisters to support (Mrs. Renfrew had known such cases), but Dottie would not do that; through her religion, she would find the patience to wait. Whatever the reason, Dottie’s heart had made its decision last summer and stuck to it splendidly; it was Mrs. Renfrew’s guess that the man was married. There were cases (the wife hopelessly insane and shut up in an institution and no prospect of her death) in which Mrs. Renfrew might have counseled a liaison for Dottie, no matter what Sam Renfrew threatened, but if it had been something of that sort, Dottie would surely have told her. No; Mrs. Renfrew did not doubt that Dottie had done the wise and brave thing in cutting this man out of her life; it only troubled her that Dottie might be marrying too hastily, “on the rebound,” before her former feelings had had a chance to die naturally. She had come back from Arizona quietly happy and looking fit as a fiddle, but with Brook still out West and the strain of the wedding preparations, she had begun to seem a little over-tired and nervous. It worried Mrs. Renfrew, now, to realize that Dottie, with two fittings yet to come on her wedding dress, would be in New York and exposed, probably, at every turn, to memories of this man.
These thoughts, sharp as bird tracks, passed through Mrs. Renfrew’s pretty little hatted head as she sat, tense with sympathy for her daughter,
in the Ritz ladies’ lounge. She wondered what Dr. Perry or Dr. Leverett, the dear old rector, would advise; perhaps Dottie would be able to talk to one of them, in case she had any real doubts about the state of her feelings. She snapped shut her handbag. “How was Dr. Perry today?” she asked smiling. “Did he give you a clean bill of health?” Dottie raised her head. “He wants to try some diathermy for my sciatica. But he says I’ll be better when I get back into the sun—the great open spaces.” She forced a twinkle into her brown eyes. Mrs. Renfrew hesitated; this was neither the time nor the place, but she was a believer in impulse. She looked around the lounge; they were alone. “Dottie,” she said. “Did Dr. Perry say anything to you about birth control?” Dottie’s face and neck reddened, giving her a rough, chapped look, like an ailing spinster. She nodded briefly. “He says you told him to, Mother. I wish you hadn’t,” Mrs. Renfrew guessed that Dr. Perry had been having one of his gruff days and had offended Dottie’s maiden modesty; engaged girls often had the most unaccountable reactions to the prospect of the wedding night. Mrs. Renfrew moved her chair a little closer. “Dottie,” she said. “Even if you and Brook are planning to have children, you mayn’t want them just yet. There’s a new device, I understand, that’s ninety-per-cent effective. A kind of rubber cap that closes off the uterus. Did Dr. Perry tell you about it?” “I stopped him,” said Dottie. Mrs. Renfrew bit her lip. “Darling,” she urged, “you mustn’t be frightened. Dr. Perry, you know, isn’t a woman’s doctor; he may have been a bit brusque. He’ll arrange to send you to a specialist, who’ll make it all seem easier. And who’ll answer any questions you want to ask—you know, about the physical side of love. Would you rather see a woman doctor? I don’t think this new device is legal yet here in Massachusetts. But Dr. Perry can fix it for you to have an appointment in New York, the next time we go down for your fittings.”
The Group Page 19